


carve your name out of the sky

by Yuisaki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 07:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuisaki/pseuds/Yuisaki
Summary: Lance stares down at Keith’s pale hand, a lump in his throat, and lets out a hoarse laugh. “Man, this is a screwed up hallucination.”“Explain,” Keith says.“I visited your grave,” Lance tells him. “I don’t bring you flowers because you hate them, so I sit there and talk to you. Just like this.”Keith stills. “You've been to my grave?”





	carve your name out of the sky

“Am I dead?” Lance asks, blinking.

A crinkle appears between Keith’s brows. “I don’t think so,” he says, then pauses. “Why?"

“I think I’m dreaming. This can’t be real. You’re not alive.”

“I’m not?”

“No,” Lance says, and impulsively reaches over to Keith’s hand, brushes his fingers across the palm and lays them flat on the planes of Keith’s wrist. Under his fingertips: _thump-thump._

A hummingbird pulse, steady but faint.

He stares down at Keith’s pale hand, a lump in his throat, and lets out a hoarse laugh. “Man, this is a screwed up hallucination.”

“Explain,” Keith says.

“I visited your grave,” Lance tells him. “I don’t bring you flowers because you hate them, so I sit there and talk to you. Just like this.”

Keith stills. “You've been to my grave?”

“Yeah.”

A sharp exhale. “Lance, I’m not —“

“I don’t think you’re real,” Lance confesses, scared and quiet, and Keith freezes. “Maybe you’re some coping mechanism I created, or one of those Altean hologram things that Allura's using to help me get over it, but either way I don’t think you’re real. I _know_ you're not real.”

“What if I am?”  
  
Lance laughs. “That’s what a hallucination would say, Keith.”  
  
“Lance. Come on.”  
  
“You know, if you say your wish out loud, it won’t come true."   
  
Keith’s eyes are bright in the shadow of the room. “What does that have to do with anything?”  
  
Lance pulls his hand back from Keith’s wrist, his pulse, and lies back down on the bed. Stares up at Keith, at how the light glances off his cheekbones, the dim blue glow making him go blurred and faint at the edges. “If I wished that you’d be alive, it wouldn't happen.” He blinks and turns to face the wall. “So I won’t wish it.”  
  
“You can wish it,” Keith says softly, so gentle it hurts. “You can say it.”  
  
“I haven’t said anything for the past five months," Lance says, "and you’re still here. I won’t say anything. I don’t care if it’s unhealthy or a hallucination or a hologram. I won’t ask anymore, but — you can’t leave me.”  
  
“You know I have to,” Keith says, and the words sound regretful and bitter. Lance wonders if he’s projecting on the hallucination. “But I’m here.”  
  
“And you won’t stay.”  
  
The bed creaks as Keith — warm, solid, not alive — presses against his back. “I’ll stay today.”  
  
Lance lets out a shuddering breath and falls asleep.  
  
* * *  
  
In the morning, Lance rolls around and without fully waking up or realizing why, he reaches out to feel the sheets.  
  
Cold.  
  
He sighs and closes his eyes.

_* * *_

The first time Keith shows up, Lance thinks it’s supposed to be a punishment.

Nights when Lance does dream of Keith, it’s usually reliving the slackening grip of Keith’s hand. Hot blood on his palms that kept slipping on the armor. Or Keith’s dark eyes, staring at nothing.

Other times, it’s Keith falling, crumpling like a cut puppet, or maybe just a dead person. Sometimes Keith joins him on the control deck and watches the stars with him, and Lance starts talking and waits for a response and turns around to find no one there.

It’s never like this, though, with Lance startling at the sound of the door hissing open. Soft steps tread in, and he reaches for his bayard before his eyes find the shadowy figure, the lean planes of him, the slight dragging limp. He’d recognize that mullet anywhere.

Grief balls up in his throat. “Hey,” Lance says roughly.

Keith smiles, leans against the doorway. “Hey.”

Lance sits up and rubs his eyes. “I think this is my second lucid dream." He stares at Keith and memorizes the quirk of his mouth, his thin fingers tucked into the crook of his elbows, the uneven balance of his body against the wall. He won’t forget. He _can’t_ forget.

“What was your first?” Keith asks. When Lance gives him a blank look, he clarifies, “Lucid dream.”

“I dreamed the war was over.” He pauses. “Sometimes feels like it’s never gonna be over, you know. Like I’ll be here when I’m ninety pushing a hundred. Piloting a lion or teaching other people how to fly or evacuating people every time a Galra fleet touches down. Drawing up plans. Stuck here — forever.”

“It’ll end,” Keith promises. “Just a few more months. We’re close.”

“It’s kinda stressing me out, man,” Lance says, laughing a little wetly. He blinks fast and tips his head back against the wall. “I can’t sleep very well.”

“Oh,” Keith says, and for some reason, frowns. “I should go.”

“No!”

Keith doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing. His arms drop to his sides, stance shifting like he’s ready to enter battle. “Lance?”

“No, I —“ He exhales and shakes his head. “Come here.”

Hesitation. After the first second, Lance doesn’t think Keith will, but eventually he crosses the room and lingers uncertainly in front of the bed.

Lance tries for a grin. “Don’t be so awkward,” he says, reaching for Keith. Lance could fill an ocean with his regrets, and not doing this earlier, before, is one of the many. “Come on.”

“You should go to sleep,” Keith says.

Lance laughs.

Keith pauses where he’s unfolding the rest of the blankets at the end of the bed and glances at him. “What’s the joke?”

It hits him again, the grief, swift and strong. “I’ll explain it to you in the morning,” he says.

Keith grins back, a tinge of —  _something_ in the smile, and disappears.

* * *

It’s a dream. He fucking _knows_ it’s a dream, and that it’s dumb to check for evidence or proof of something that never happened except in his mind, but he still checks his room corner to corner for any sign that Keith was there at all.

He finds nothing, and tries not to feel disappointed, or anything at all.

* * *

A few weeks later, he gets another dream again.

Insomnia has been really getting at him, but after hours of staring at the blue light reflected on the ceiling, he somehow manages to falls asleep. Then blinks to find Keith easing the door shut manually.

“Next time you should maybe knock,” Lance says, voice hoarse with sleep. Keith turns and raises an eyebrow at him as Lance waves at his general direction. “Even in this kinda situation, it’s objectively creepy to barge into someone’s room.”

Keith snorts. “I’ll keep it in mind, then.”

“Thanks,” he says, but it’s absent — he’s more caught up in noticing Keith’s hair, tied at the base of his neck. “Why do you have your hair tied?”

Keith’s hand flies up to his head. “Oh, I wa —“

“Wait, no,” Lance says, “I mean, it looks nice.” Keith’s hand falls away as he stares, eyes wide. Lance swallows. “You should keep it.”

A short pause, and then Keith repeats, this time softer and different, “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Heat floods Lance's face, and he changes the subject. “A lot of things changed while you were gone,” he says, thinking back. “Um, we ended up winning that battle for X-214 and freed them. Blew up a few more fleets. Allura thinks that there’s about a quarter of their original forces remaining. Like, alive and loyal to them. She thinks it’s a matter of time.”

“Until we win?"

“Yeah.”

Keith’s gaze bores into him. “And what do you think?”

Normally he keeps all his thoughts and insecurities to himself. Here, though, to this image of his own Keith, he only stalls for a brief second before admitting, “I don’t think the war’s gonna end.”

“You mean the aftermath?"

Lance picks at the threads of the blanket, pulling a certain piece away, watching it unravel in his fingers. “No, just… the fighting. The exhaustion. I’m always tired now, Keith.”

“Me too,” Keith says.

Lance smiles. “I’d imagine you’d be.” Dead, dead, dead. “You’ve been sleeping for a couple months now.”

“I’m awake now,” Keith points out.

“Awake here,” Lance says. He tears at the thread and stares down at the rumpled blanket in his hands. “I miss you.”

He looks up to see Keith’s lips part.

“I don’t have anyone to watch my six now,” Lance goes on, quiet. “Everything sounds silent without someone to argue with. It’s only me and Allura drawing up battle plans now. I don’t think Red likes me as much as she did you. It’s hard.” He stops and swallows, eyes burning. “Harder without you here.”

Keith doesn’t speak for a minute. When he does, his voice is hoarse. “I don’t think I ever said sorry to you,” he says finally. Lance glances up. He looks torn, angry, bitter. “I’m so fucking — god. Thanks. For trying, and — I’m sorry it had to be you who saw. In that last moment.”

“I’m sorry it had to be you,” Lance counters, and then falters.

Before, the grief was pushed to the back of his head, a constant weight on his shoulders, but now that Keith has brought it up, everything comes crashing down on him, drowning him in his regrets, his unspoken apologies, his blame.

And then he remembers it, so vividly like it happened yesterday. Because the thing is, it keeps happening. He keeps reliving it, rewatching it, and it always says — says —

_“Hey, come on, Keith — Keith, stay with me here, we’re almost there, yeah? Almost home free —“_

_“No,” Keith says back, faint, “I don’t think we are,” and “I gotta —“_

_And then there’s a soft sigh against his neck, and then it slumps, Keith’s body slumps, but Lance doesn’t feel it because he’s too focused on getting them out and holding Keith’s blood in and shooting out everyone else. Then he gets to the ship. Then he looks. Then Keith is — is —_

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Fuck, I’m so — I couldn’t save you. I couldn’t fucking save you. I — I watched you, I dragged your body for minutes before I even fucking realized —“ He breaks off and shudders. He still feels it now, the listless slump of Keith’s unmoving body against his side. The silence. The sob wrenches itself out of him, like it’s ripped from somewhere deep within. “I’m so fucking sorry. Fuck. _Fuck."_

Hands grip the sides of his face, tearing his gaze from the ground. “I’m here,” Keith says, and Lance latches on the sound of his voice like a fucking lifeline. “Hey, I’m here, okay? I’m alive. I’m here.”

“No, you’re not,” Lance chokes out. “You’re only here. Nowhere else. Only here. Fuck, I — Keith, I miss you so fucking much, I can’t do it. I can’t — alone, we fucking _left_ you, alone, for so long. I can’t —”

“You can,” Keith says, and it’s firm the first time he says it, but then he says again, “you can,” and this time it’s broken, mournful, and Lance reaches around and grips the back of Keith’s jacket to catch him, hold him, keep him, but he knows that it won’t be enough.

And by the time the morning comes, his eyes are crusted with tears, and his pillow is wet, but the bed is cold and like every day since, there is no one else in the room but himself.

* * *

Here’s the fucked up thing. Everyone knew Keith was good at fighting. The instinct, the calm head, the grace — he had it. Everything needed in a damn good fighter, he had it, excelled at it.

Lance had it too. Maybe he wasn’t as good of a fighter as Keith, or had the instinct to pull off the crazy things like he did, but Lance always was good at fighting, planning, surviving.

Before, Lance sometimes thought that the reason they got along so poorly was because they were too similar — too stubborn, too eager for a fight. But they did well in battle because they were too different, covered each other’s weaknesses. Lance planned. Keith acted.

The fucked up thing is, Keith acted until he died. He tried to escape. Fight back. Return. Lance planned for a way to get them out alive, and his brain worked on autopilot until they were off that fleet, and he thought but he didn’t  _think_ until he looked down and saw Keith, bloodless and stiff, on the hard floor of his lion.

They’re too similar. Keith acted until he died. Lance should plan until he dies. But he’s not dead yet.

That’s the fucked up thing. They’re too different.

Keith is dead, and Lance is wretchedly alive.

* * *

It's a dream. It's a memory. It's a dream, and a memory, and neither and _both_ —

* * *

“Am I dead?” Lance asks, blinking.

A crinkle appears between Keith’s brows. “I don’t think so,” he says, then pauses. “Why?”

“I think I’m dreaming." In the low light, the slopes of Keith's shoulders, the pale lines of his bandaged arms, and the violet gaze fixed on Lance's face all sharpen into focus. "This can’t be real. You're not alive.”

“I’m not?”

“No,” Lance says, and impulsively reaches over to Keith’s hand, brushes his fingers across the palm and lays them flat on the planes of Keith’s wrist. Under his fingertips: _thump-thump._

A hummingbird pulse, faint but steady.

Keith meets his eyes and smiles. 

* * *

In the morning, he lifts his head. The other side of the bed is still warm. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been sitting on this one for a while and i didn't know what to do about it up until one of my pals (ily rynnie) suggested posting it anyway and making it into a possible series so WHEEZE we'll see how that goes
> 
> my tumblr's yuisaki-drabbles.tumblr.com if you wanna chat!!


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